Academic

Book Announcement: Borrowing Constitutional Designs by Skach

By Lawrence Solum

Borrowing Constitutional Designs
Constitutional Law in Weimar Germany and the French Fifth Republic
Cindy Skach

To read the entire book description or the introduction, please visit: http://press.princeton.edu/titles/8094.html

After the collapse of communism, some thirty countries scrambled to craft democratic constitutions. Surprisingly, the constitutional model they most often chose was neither the pure parliamentary model found in most of Western Europe at the time, nor the presidential model of the Americas. Rather, it was semi-presidentialism--a rare model known more generally as the "French type." This constitutional model melded elements of pure presidentialism with those of pure parliamentarism. Specifically, semi-presidentialism combined a popularly elected head of state with a head of government responsible to a legislature. Borrowing Constitutional Designs questions the hasty adoption of semi-presidentialism by new democracies.

"Cindy Skach has produced a compelling and important book. Combining theoretical discussion with sustained historical analysis, Borrowing Constitutional Designs is a well-written and -executed example of the 'new institutionalism' that seems to have swept across the social sciences in recent years."--Amalia D. Kessler, Law and Politics Book Review

Full post as published by Legal Theory Blog on January 20, 2010 (boomark / email).